When we are older

We are more confident because we know ourselves better. We know what we don't want. We know what will hurt and what will strengthen. We know what will make us happy or frustrate us.

Sure we know all that... but our hearts are still young fools. We still love whether or not it's good for us. We just know how to tell ourselves when it's enough, when it's time to say "no" and move on. We don't want to drag it out anymore.

I think it's easy to fall in love when you feel a connection to someone. It feels good even if they don't reciprocate because it gives you hope that you will find someone else like them who will love you back. There's a little struggle to let them go... but you're used to that by now. This isn't your first dance.

amorette

I'm looking for...

I'm not looking for a party boy, a sex toy, a provider, a father, a crutch, an ego boost, or arm candy. I'm not looking for the "I'll see you only on date night I've gotta hang with my bros and do my own thing 90% of the time." I'm looking for a best friend. I'm not a great explorer, a champion athlete, a genius, a crazy crafter, or eccentric in any way. I'm pretty damn normal. I'm looking for a best friend who enjoys having conversations with me, spending time with me, making plans with me... a man who wants to wake up next to me every day. I want someone who wants to start here with nothing with me, a stranger, and build a foundation--not stake a tent.  I don't want to feel like I'm putting on an act, striving to be perfect, and competing with other women. I want to be with someone who's love I can put my trust in. I'm looking for someone who is looking for the same thing and doesn't need to create all this "your life and my life" drama. I want to be a "we" and I don't want to be the only one to make compromises. I want a companion to share my adventures and my failures. I'm done with the "when times are good" guys. I'm done with pretending I'm anything other than what I am.

Sometimes I can see how it might be ok to bounce between short term relationships throughout a lifetime... because each person brings something new to your life... but it's not what I want. I want to have that history and the memory of having known each other when we were young, having so much shared experience--and being able to help, support and encourage other to have the best life possible. Running around from lover to lover is stressful to me and in the long run it doesn't make me happy... the short term is another story.

Amorette

Weekend warrior

I spent the last four years suffering with a loss of adventure, a loss of my life. I need a companion who wants to spend his free time with me. I want weekends exploring outside the home and enjoying life. My ex was a workaholic. Working all week and coming home and working all weekend. I felt jailed in the house and alone. If he wasn't working on his hobbies we were at his friends or moms house helping with their hobbies or at the very least talking about them. My hobbies are contained to the weekdays when the day is nearly done and there isn't much other option. I need my partner to spend time with me. My friends are always doing things on the weekends with their boyfriends and I was just waiting for mine and now I am just out by myself. It's much more fun to take a road trip with a friend, visit a museum, travel to a local city... I can't have a happy relationship if I am expected to live my life alone while they are focused on themselves. I can remember every time we left the city for a weekend together: one of his friends weddings or to visit one of his friends homes or events. Once to visit my friends for a bbq (this was a shock), twice to my parents -- but only because he had to go near there anyway and it was a free place to sleep, he insisted we got there late and had to leave early. I can't count the number of times we spent the day at his moms house, that was at least 1 day a month. That is not a fun or happy life for me, that is just a life agreeing to someone elses plans. Over time I realized I had no say in what we were going to do and when my activity ideas were consistently rejected or overruled I stopped having ideas. If I wanted to do anything I had to do it on my own. So, not much has changed between then and now. People say they are "better off alone" for a reason. There is no one to disappoint me, except maybe myself.

Attached is a photo of a book page that resonated with me this morning.

amorette

fairweather friends

you'll find out your true friends eventually. there are some friends and lovers (and even family) who will only be there for you in the good times when you are fit and happy and gainfully employed. then there are those that if you are having a down time, or are ill, or are between jobs or unsatisfied at work, they will judge and distance themselves and prove they are no friends at all. i've had a lot of boyfriends that proved they were the fairweather friend variety. you have to be able to take the good times with the bad.

i watched a documentary on a cancer researcher who got cancer over the weekend. of course that's going to be the worst time in someones life. and her family kicked her out of the home and didn't speak to her for the final years of her life. that's just awful. how can people be so badly behaved? i think i do not have family like that and i do not have a terminal illness so of course i can be grateful for my situation. i think everyone has the fears of growing older and being alone. if they do not have children (or have ungrateful, ill or children who die young).

whenever you meet someone and welcome them into your life... don't you kind of wonder if they would be there for you, no matter what?

There's nothing wrong

I've come to think there wasn't anything wrong with us. We're not defective people. We didn't know how to expose our feelings and emotional needs and solve problems without closing off or hurting each other. We didn't know what we were doing. I don't know what I will do different next time. I try to be open about things but sometimes I feel it gets brushed off and I just get blamed for being upset. Then I stop talking. I get angry and eventually I act out. I started off doing the right thing... But sometimes I just don't get heard. That's not something you can live with and stay happy.

amorette

summer is over

or so they say. the weather is still glorious. i am back to riding the bike. the brakes were a pain to change because my front wheel isn't true anymore. i guess i crashed it too many times. i have to get one of those tools to tighten the spokes. oh and also because one of the bolts was stuck on. its moments like that you are trying to hold the hex key, the wrench and hit it with a hammer that you kind of wish you had man strength.

uconn alumni event tonight to get to then a few days ahead unplanned. i've got to look up some cool new spots the kids are going to now for friday night. ok the adults. i don't want to wind up hanging out with the kids.

not much going on in the dating world. last night i had a date with my cat and "orphan black." i love the library. it keeps me from waiting for netflix to buffer my shows. so much easier to hit next and it just comes on. (well easier than calling & paying the cable-internet-company)

so does "looking for friends" on dating websites mean "looking for friends with benefits?" i always thought it meant, that if you have fun hanging out but the romantic chemistry isn't there then we could be friends. maybe that's a "girl" way to look at things. i'm sorry, i'll stay a girl. thank you.

amorette

I really did

... love him. With all I had. Unfortunately he hurt me by not taking my needs seriously. He hurt me so I became unhappy/bitchy/negative/not fun... whatever you want to call it. It got to a place where if I said I was upset about something he no longer heard me, took it seriously or tried to change like he used to. He ignored it, he told me I was wrong, he ignored us... He went ahead and did whatever he wanted even if I asked him not to. He forgot the times I told him why I was upset and distilled everything to a belief that I was just upset without reason. I stopped trying to explain my feelings when they elicited no response and just hoped he would finally realize the truth of what I had said in the past (like how he takes my advice constantly while not remembering I gave him the advice). Things fell apart. I don't think I will ever understand how or why he stopped caring about my happyness.

I deserve someone who will never stop caring. Who won't sabotage us and then tell me there is something wrong with my personality. I am this way now because he hurt me, because he didn't value me. I wasn't like this when we met. I won't be like this when I forget.

amorette

Never ending yard sales

I always go home for labor day weekend. Depsite the awful traffic. We are having a yard sale this weekend. What that means is, we are too lazy to buy a booth at the flea market and we would rather recoup $5-10 selling items than donate them or list them online. It's kind of a slow drawn out affair. Some people come at 9am and some people come at 5pm. No one seems to come between. Today there are a lot of slow drive bys.

My brain has been dictating awful dreams. It's hard to get over what's happened when your mind is lulling you back into the past when you are unconscious. I still find it hard to believe how quickly someone leaves your life when there had been so much good for so long. I feel like second chances aren't a thing anymore.

The bugs here are so loud. And constant. They get in your face, your ears, your eyes. We trapped one last night that had some kind of tail longer than its body. It was so disgustingly creepy I didn't even want a photo. I like bugs like inchworms. Those are cute. The rest can stay invisible.

The cat here doesn't like to sit with you and feigns sleep when you want to pet her. She plays, but doesn't fetch. Silly cat.

amorette

An excerpt from a book I'm reading

"It's Not You 27 (Wrong) Reasons You're Single" by Sara Eckel

Chapter: You're Too Negative

Concerned about global warming? Apalled by the way money corrupts the democratic process? Notice that the restaurant manager is bullying his staff? If you're on a date, better keep those observations to yourself.

Experts might disagree on how assertive or vulnerable or chatty one should be with the opposite sex, but on the subject of optimism we see near universal consensus: Smile, sweetheart.

And who could argue with that? We all know people who whine endlessly, or whose depression puts them in a state of near paralysis. So obviously certain conversation topics—your meth-addicted father, your knee surgery—usually make lousy getting-to-know-you conversation fodder.

But most of us already have the social grace to not overshare about our tax audits or plantar warts. Unfortunately, the incessant mantra of "be positive" implies that anyone who doesn't like her job or has a complicated relationship with her family—a fairly wide swatch of the population—must paper over these edgy truths with perky platitudes about bosses who are tough but fair.

Even though I've always had what I consider a . . . realistic view of life, I tried to obey the common wisdom and keep it light and upbeat when dating.

Sometimes the tone would stay that way, and we'd have a pleasant enough evening, talking about the work we enjoyed and vacations we were looking forward to. But those dates are mostly forgotten. The really good dates were the ones where we shed the positivity facade fairly quickly. The ones where we talked about divorce and stepfamilies and melting ice caps. The ones where we forgot to censor ourselves, forgot to sell ourselves and just were ourselves—two somewhat lonely human beings trying to figure it all out. (One of the things I liked about Internet dating was that it brings everyone to ground level—when you meet online with a Saturday-at-ten-p.m. time stamp, you can't play the my-life-is-amazing card.)

Obviously, I'm not everyone's dream date. Sure some people would prefer that, when asked about your loathsome job, you take the advice of one pop psychologist: "Well, I don't know if I can say the work is fun, but the people are great!" Some people hate the sound of bad news.

On the other hand, some of us hate the sound of bullshit. Some of us would rather hear, "You know, I've been doing this for fifteen years and I don't like the direction my profession is headed in, and I'm honestly pretty confused about what to do next." Whether a person is a "downer" or refreshingly honest is a matter of taste.

Still, even if the dating gurus go overboard, wouldn't cultivating a positive attitude be a, you know, positive thing to do?

Not necessarily. In The Antidote: Happiness for People who Can't Stand Positive Thinking, journalist Oliver Burkeman explains how trying to suppress negative thoughts can actually make them more prevalent, a phenomena called "ironic process theory."

Most of us have done the thought experiment where you're instructed not to think of pink elephants, and then of course discover that trying to banish anything from your mind makes it more prevalent—trying not to think of pink elephants wildly ratchets up your awareness of pink elephants. This is why instructions to "think positively" don't work. "A person who has resolved to 'think positively' must constantly scan his or her mind for negative thoughts—there's no other way the mind could ever gauge its success at the operation—yet that scanning will draw attention to the presence of negative thoughts," wrote Burkeman.

In one experiment, people who were told not to feel sad about an unfortunate event were more distressed than those who received no instruction. Another study found that anxiety sufferers who listened to relaxation tapes had faster heart rates than those who listened to audiobooks on non-relaxation-related topics. After the death of a loved one, people who suppress their grief take longer to heal than those who allow themselves to feel the pain of their loss. And it turns out, positive affirmations aren't just embarrassing—one study found that people with low self-esteem actually felt worse after reciting the affirmation "I am a lovable person."

"From this perspective, the relentless cheer of positive thinking begins to seem less like an expression of joy and more like a stressful effort to stamp out any trace of negativity. . . . A positive thinker can never relax, lest an awareness of sadness or failure creep in," wrote Burkeman in the New York Times.

The "be positive" advice makes you fear the dark. You've got all the lights turned on, constantly vigilant. Rather than trying to eradicate negativity, Burkeman takes inspiration from the Buddhists: It's a far more effective strategy to clearly see unfortunate circumstances or unpleasant emotions for what they are—part of life, nothing to freak out about. He sums up this philosophy with words from 1960s counterculture philosopher Alan Watts: "When you try to stay on the surface of the water, you sink. But when you try to sink, you float."

This is the best dating advice I've ever heard. Instead of suppressing whatever cocktail of feelings—anxiety, ambivalence, lust—that's brewing as you walk into that restaurant, why not just note them and barrel on ahead?

Dating is an act of outrageous vulnerability. You're leaving the comfort of your home and your friends to subject yourself to the scrutiny of strangers. You're sliding into that restaurant booth, plopping your laptop and gym bag on the floor, and saying, "Hi, I'm Sara. Let's see if we can start a life together, shall we?"

It doesn't get more optimistic than that.

"Its Not You" on Amazon.com
"The Antidote" on Amazon.com
"The Positive Power of Negative Thinking" New York Times

PCOS & depression

This is my problem in an nutshell pcosdietsupport.com/.../pcos-and-depression/

Depression makes it hard to avoid having negative thoughts... since having overwhelming negative thoughts is basically the definition of being depressed. Everyone has been telling me to "be more positive." That never used to be something I'd hear. But I've never been down for so long. Yes after failures, or breakups I have gone through depressions. But not prolonged like this to the point where it seems my whole personality has changed. Yes, easy for you to say to look at the bright side. It's not easy for me to do that. That is the point: when you are depressed nothing looks positive.

I used my relationship as my positive pin. It was the thing keeping me hopeful. Now that it is gone, I've come loose. The depression has kept me from being able to be empathetic. It has kept me from being able to realize what was happening between us. It has kept me distant despite that not being my intention. For all intents and purposes, I appear changed, a different person, a person that is not fun to be around. I know this is not me, it is temporary. But it has been going on for so long it is hard for other people who have not known me my whole life to see that this is a phase and not a new state of being. I received my diagnosis midway into our relationship, so yes I'm not the same person you met on day 1. Not on day 1340. I'm struggling to be "me" again.

The PCOS diet is so hard to stick to b/c I just crave carbs all the time (literally constantly thinking of food!). My mood goes up and down with my diet. I was really good for a year there (christmas 2012-2013) with all the fitbit tracking and weight loss and exercising. I did lose 12-13% of my body weight. Then my weight refused to go down any further and I got upset and I stopped doing all of the diet control and then the eating and everything (mood, energy) went right down hill again. My doctors also applauded the weight loss and stopped fat shaming me, so my motivation dwindled. My boyfriend never mentioned my weight, but he is not one to criticize (or compliment), so that did not contribute any motivation.

The truth is eating crappy food makes me feel good when I'm eating it. I'm satisfying my craving. Ask me if I'm thinking about Doritos? Yes. Fried chicken fingers? Yes. Chinese? Yes, of course. You know the "honeycomb craving" commercial character? That's me. But as soon as I'm done eating it I feel like shit because my body does not like it (and I feel guilty). I feel like I'm going to fall dead asleep and could exist in a comatose state. I feel bad before I even get halfway through whatever I'm eating. Food control is a constant obsession that overruns every other thought of my day. ::what's breakfast? what's snack? what's lunch? what's snack? what's dinner?:: Being put on a 1200 calorie diet (nutritionist actually suggested less!) and told to exercise an hour a day is akin to telling you that you must be constantly hungry. I am constantly hungry. My brain is telling me I'm starving. This makes me more likely to be irritable and short tempered.

This is the me right now. I didn't used to be this way. I used to just eat whatever/whenever, and not care; if I wanted to lose weight I'd go to the gym for a month and it would go away. I have to get to know myself all over again. Working to control myself and the food-depression-cycle has made me stressed, unhappy and negative because I feel like my body is fighting me. I can't live the lifestyle I was used to. I can't drink a lot, I can't eat whatever I want, I can't behave like everyone around me. It made me jealous of people I used to be friends with. The jealousy is toxic. I now associate food with gaining weight, with losing hair, with losing sexuality/femininity, with failure. Its like a strange eating-mood-disorder.

This is a major contribution to the end of my last relationship. No one wants to talk about something that leaves them feeling unsexy and worried about their future health and their "womanly" characteristics. No woman wants to see their doctor shrug and say there is nothing else we can do and to just accept it.

As a scientific minded person I want to understand everything. I want to fix everything. Its not easy to look at things objectively when your emotions are part of it. When you feel you are out of control of yourself and your own body and there are lists of supplements and medications and treatments a mile long you get overwhelmed. I don't like to be the subject of the science experment. My linen closet has turned into shelves of experimental solutions. Nothing provides immediate results and there's just not enough time or money to run all of the possible solutions in parallel. Plus, that doesn't give you any valid experimental results.

I can try one thing at a time and wind up wasting time with no noticeable results. But in the end it all goes back to blaming the food. The food is the enemy. That's the beginning of an eating disorder talking. I don't want to be that food freak. Its turning out that I may just have to be that person to be a balanced person. I may have to increase the nuerotic food behavior to decrease the unwanted emotional behavior.

Life is not easy. You can't appreciate the good if there isn't any bad, right?

<3 amorette

i define myself

now that i am free i can do exactly what suits me. which makes me realize i'd rather not waste my time doing what suits everyone else. i can go to a party or a concert or whatever on a friday/saturday and have no one telling me that they are not into that and would rather i tag along with whatever they are doing. no one making me choose between their company or my other friends company.

checked out Nantasket beach with some friends. was relaxing. the seagulls are over eager. they took a bag of chips out of my beach bag and ate the whole thing without leaving even a bit of crumbs. very efficient. i'd go back. gotta find the free parking though. need the local pro-tips.

playing with the canon EOS XT a little bit. took the 28-80mm out to get some photos during the fire festival. good on food. night shots with handheld not so great, unless you like the light blur i guess. lots more testing to do.

this post was after my last breakup, fall 2010. "end of 2010". its happened all over again. this is the first time i've been single in the summer... for as long as i can remember.

amorette

if that's how you really feel...

... my life will be so much better without you

you know how tswift sings "she's an actress..." well he was an actor. for almost 4 years he convinced me he was a loving boyfriend who just needed time with his friends and time to himself and his own space. and then he got tired of acting. he got tired of pleasing me and only wanted to please himself.

i want someone who believes that love is selfless. i want someone know knows that we all have flaws but overlooks them to see the whole picture of self. if you both put your partner first, both your needs will be met. if i put him first and he puts everyone and their 2nd cousin first, well i know where we stand.

here's to the end. here's to the sweat and the cheer, the lust, the tears and the hate, the whole circle of things. another long battle together to wind up alone and hurt. oh, but he's moving on. he has to jump right on someone else "because that's what men do." that's not what men do. you aren't some A-lister dude brah. you are a regular. a silent awkward small man. i really doubt you have the girls lined up waiting for you to call.

unless you really are a faker and you had to line up a taker before you cut me loose. what a weak soul.

i don't want someone who will take the easy way out. i don't want someone who will look at only the failed relationships and not at all the wonderful ones that last. you can't call me negative when you are the one saying that love isn't worth a little struggle to understand each other, a little pain when you didn't know why i did something... but didn't ask.

you can't be quiet when your feelings are loud.

i most definitely cannot read your mind. i cannot interpret your sexual dances. i do not think a request for a walk or a conversation is anything but a walk or a conversation.

i am a real person. i am a giver. i always thought he was a giver. he gave and gave and gave in the end he said it was "not to make them like me, but to keep the peace." he thinks i do everything to make people like me? no. i don't. sorry. why do you think i often piss people off? because i am not doing everything to make people like me. i am doing what i can. i am doing what i like. i am not to be stepped on by everyone around me. unless they trick me and tell me they love me. then i get stepped all over. there is the loop hole.

i need to close it

amorette

time for a revamp

its been almost 2 years since the last post. i only blog when i need to talk to myself i guess. anyway. i'm getting into some new things. need some new people in my life as a whole bunch are now no longer part of my friend group. that's how it goes when your man leaves you... here's to the future. and the next heartbreak. its inevitable.

the photo in the new refresh of this blog is from a recent trip to orchard beach maine. i've been aquiring loads more photo stuff, but this one was taken with my cell phone camera. once i find the right venue i can post my favorite dslr photos.

amorette